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The web in now blessed with a fulsome variety of `interactive’
devices to assist authors in engaging with their visitors. Much of their
potential, however, is yet to be realised. Part of the problem is the lack of
steady ground on which to work. To be a competent web designer today requires
keeping up with a rapidly changing artistic environment. Previously, the skills
involved in becoming an artist were relatively finite and good tools lasted a
lifetime. In the global computer network, however, you have your work cut out
simply keeping abreast with upgrades to Netscape betas, innovations in HTML code,
VRML and multimedia add-ins, etc.

In this accelerated medium, it’s easy to treat each new
interactive device as a toy to be played with and quickly replaced by the next
version. By the time you’ve mastered its features, another more exciting
gadget has arrived. So how do you turn a toy
into a tool? How do you settle on a
device long enough to start using it productively? The answer to this question
entails a change of focus from means
to ends: it means turning away from
the expanse of possibilities towards the goals that direct them.

So what do web authors want to achieve? Such a broad question is
not easy to answer, yet it is critical given absence of familiar artistic
rewards, such as sales and direct contact with an audience. The proliferation of
web counters suggests that a simple quantitative goal like increasing the number
of hits might be desired.But to
use a metaphor that will be relevant later, aiming for `hits’ is like angling
for `bites’ rather than `fish’. A `hit’ does not discriminate between an
ideal visitor who reads all the text, fully explores every corner of the site,
fills in all the forms, and feels their life changed as a result; and a `knowbot’
which updates a search engine by automatically trawling the web

The most conspicuous sign of qualitative success is an accolade
such as Top 5% or Cool
Site of the Day. The problem with these web honours is that they are awarded
either purely on the basis of hit counts, or their `cool’ attitude suits a
very limited set of visitors; in particular, the `net surfers’ who cruise the
web to keep in touch with the latest tricks.Such tributes are unlikely to indicate any lasting value: can you imagine
being interested in visiting a Cool Site
of the Day which is more than a year old?

For these reasons, an inquiry into the very particular goals of
web authors requires a radically different point of view. As a speculative
device, therefore, this outline invites you to step back to a pre-electronic era
and consider the life of an angler in 17th century England. Of
course, for web authors there is nothing practical to be learnt from the art of
catching fish. Where benefit may obtain is applying the same kind of critical
perspective used to describe the art of angling to the emerging craft of web
design.

The Compleat Angler

Izaak Walton’s The
Compleat Angler is of more symbolic than practical significance. For Irving
Washington, this venerated book `breathes a innocent and happy spirit’ which,
with an English regard for nature, `makes a science of sport’. As a guide to
catching fish, however, it is limited by its exactitude: Walton’s advice on
snaring trout, salmon or pike is often specific to the very meadow where he
sits. Appropriate bait is frequently drawn from the local population of worms`which for colour and shape alter even as the ground out of which they
are got’.

While it is the complete antithesis of a global network, the
river-world evoked by the Compleat Angler
does have similarities to the web we angle in today. Both the river and the web
are places where individuals might come to relax and contemplate the forces that
shape their world. Unlike libraries, they contain little history. The river and
the web are constantly changing environments: you can’t log on to the same web
twice. Mark Twain praises the Mississippi: `it had a new story to tell every
day’¾so
it is the case with web pages that a recent update marker is a sign of a freshly
flowing site.

While the technical means available in Walton’s time where
limited, the variety of stratagems and conceits that might be employed by an
angler are comparable to the range of media tools we can to use disseminate
information. Yet while the mechanics of these devices are widely disseminated,
the particular effect they achieve is
little remarked upon. A school of criticism appropriate to the web would need to
consider these effects carefully. What response do you think a good web site
should produce: intrigue, reverie or a unique multimedia sublime?

As an introduction to this question, let’s follow the
metaphorical path leading to the successful web site:

1. Cast the fishing line = upload web files to site

2. Bait the hook = place link in directory, email notice,
search engine or other web site

The critical point in this strategy is the decision by the
visitor to `take the bait’ and enter the spirit of the site. The primary
difficulty here is the propensity of web visitors¾attention
spans worn thin by channel-surfing and magazine flicking¾to
cruise sites without ever fully tasting their contents. Unlike a gallery, where
the visitor is captive to that space, at the click of a button web visitors can
exit an online exhibition that doesn’t immediately excite their interest. To
use the more frequent analogy, the task is to turn the `net surfer’ into a
`web diver’.

Gutenberg Elegies

If we succeed in doing this, then we may well show that humanist
critics have been wrong in their dismissal of Internet. In his defense of the
`missionary position of reading’, the Gutenberg
Elegies, Sven Birkerts bemoans the `gradual displacement of the vertical by
the horizontal’, where more is read for less purpose. Birkerts’ main reason
for preferring the linear narrative to its hypertext version, is that it offers
`a chance to subject the anarchic subjectivity to another's disciplined
imagination, a chance to be taken in unsuspected directions under the guidance
of some singular sensibility’ (p. 164). What prevents an electronic text from
doing this, according to Birkerts, is that readers are reluctant to involve
themselves in a materiality as ephemeral as pixels on a screen.

Ephemerality, of course, is a relative notion. Paper pages seem
ephemeral by comparison with stone tablets. And in the future, our digital files
might seem like granite compared to the latest nanotechnological medium. This is
not to say that materiality is irrelevant, only that it should not lead us to
despair at the depth of response possible on the web. Plainly, if any medium is
capable of taking its audience `in unsuspected directions’ it is the web. What
it needs is a `singular sensibility’¾a
strategy. Here we need to focus on a sample of the techniques uniquely available
to web authors.

Client-pull/Server-push

Client-pull/server-push introduces an element of surprise to the
web. A seasoned web-surfer learns ways of idling the time while waiting for the
screen fill with images and text from top to bottom like an inverted tank. Each
screen offers a choice: Is it interesting enough to go further? Are there
different routes available? The client-pull/server-push technique wrests this
control away from the visitor by
seizing the decision making power.

Though their output can be quite similar, client-pull and
server-push operate on different principles. Client-pull is an HTML code which
issues a command only when a certain condition on the visitor’s side has been
reached. This is opposed to `server-push’ where the timing is controlled by
the server. Returning to our fishing metaphor, client-pull is similar to an
angler who lets the hooked fish take the slack on the line, while server-push is
equivalent to a less patient angler who tugs the line to further embed the hook
in the fish.

A dramatic use of the server-push technique might be found in
the Black Hole of the Web, where the
bait is a warning for visitors not to proceed further. Once the inevitable
decision to proceed is taken, the screen turns from white, to gray, to black and
admonishments appear at intervals, such as `Lonely, isn’t it?’. After some
time, the messages disappear and the black screen continues to be refreshed
until the visitor regains control by closing the browser or opening another
bookmark as a lifesaver. This clever subversion of net surfing demonstrates the
dramatic possibilities of web design.

A more local incursion into screen space creates the illusion of
movement on screen. Limited to a small section of the screen, the emergence of
`push animation’ in web sites is resembles the use of flies to entice fish to
the surface by using a moving lure.

Animation can be created by a variety of means, ranging from
server-push, Java programs,to
add-ins such as Shockwave, Macromedia
Director’s plugin for Netscape. At a very basic level, animations provide
motivation for visitors to look at the screen, careful not to miss the action.
Disseminated through the Internet, these animations are mostly quite crude and
examples of animation used for a particular aesthetic affect are rare.

Ironically, though, this very primitive state of animation
serves to retrieve a mystery lost to its more sophisticated uses in film. Web
animations, particularly with slow connections, have the stilted appearance of
flipcards. The magic of this very crude movement is that you can be
simultaneously aware of both the illusion and its material construction. Of
course, the unsophisticated state of animation is reason for many to put the web
on hold until it catches up with other media. This may be a mistake. It is the
capacity to renew an almost archaic fascination with illusion techniques which
may be the singular advantage of web animation. Ironically, it took the height
of sophistication in media technologies to return us to this primal scene.

From the other side of
the screen and history, the client-pull technique has been used to advance ideas
unique to our end of the millennium. Alan Liu’s Lyotard's Auto-Different page cuts up text from the French
philosopher Francois Lyotard into screens which transform static discourse into
a temporal flow. The aim, for Liu, is to replace slabs of words and graphics
with `text tracks’ which produce a discourse that visitors have to steer
as much as read. Liu writes of the advantages of this technique:

Client-pull makes it possible to reflect on the fact that each
of our communications is paced by simultaneous demands made on the network by
other communications—by the time-sensitive collectivity that constitutes
historicity.

Ironically, this technique is best suited to slow connections: a
fast download rate can turn a gentle trickle of words into whitewater.

In more accessible web publications, client-pull is often being
used to provide a `courtesy screen’ for those awaiting a heavily loaded screen
to download. `Please wait for files to download’ at a very simple level
demonstrates that the author has anticipated the visitor’s waiting experience.
While not of aesthetic interest at this level, it does make opportunities for
strategic `client-pulls’ which need not consign the visitor to an irreversible
descent, but set up expectations of what is to follow.

Whether or not these possibilities are fully exploited depends
on how seriously web authors take these kinds of techniques. The unfavourable
comparison with animation on multimedia and the temporary nature of HTML code
may dissuade many from investing their creative energies in this area. But as
the film industry learnt that black and white could be a matter of artistic
choice rather than technological backwardness, so the very simple nature of
these techniques may generate their own unique language¾if
allowed to.

Cast off

Of course, client-pull/server-push is one of a number of
techniques available to web authors for luring visitors to take their bait.
Online forms which request information from visitors that is used in subsequent
screens demonstrate a powerful way of involving visitors in a more direct
fashion that any other media. In the second part of Compleat Web-ster we look at
a range of contributions by writers reflecting on their experience at particular
sites. We’ll discover which web-generic techniques entice their visitors to
take the hook, the line or the sinker.